


Sunflowers and Weeds

by Volkihar_Iveriah



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-08-14 04:20:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20186155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Volkihar_Iveriah/pseuds/Volkihar_Iveriah
Summary: Arthur Morgan is saved and nursed back to health by a gentle, kind, witty servant girl in Rhodes when he is critically wounded by Lemoyne Raiders. When the time comes and Arthur is as healthy as he can be, he is unable to stay away from the last thing on the earth that brings him peace, as unsettling as it is to him, and the gang, and the woman's cruel abusive mistress begin to grow suspicious. Arthur has to fight against the battle of his mind and heart, and of those who would oppose the fleeting happiness that the two oblivious lovers have found within each other.





	1. Chapter 1

His horse rocked erratically underneath him, it’s dappled coat slicked wet with sweat, and he imagined if he could see it’s mouth it’d be frothing with over-exertion. Still, Arthur weakly nudged the mare to keep going strong, certain he could still hear hollars and gunshots a distance behind him. The mare made a terrible sound in complaint, but he knew she would keep going, and as his vision finally faded from bright white spots to a peaceful black, he silently thanked her.

XXX

Roses, fickle beautiful flowers, so hard to grow but so beautiful to look at, and even sweeter to smell. Truly, roses are the most treasured flower, and they will treat you right, until you’re too rough then you will be pricked with a thorn. Which is why only the most gentle people could handle Mistress Braithwaite’s precious flowers, and Primrose, or ‘Prim’ was the perfect person for the job. The young bright woman was doing just that now, trimming Mrs. Braithwaites rose bushes by the outer gates, when she heard loud huffing noises and snapping twigs in the woods behind her.

She gasped with fright, holding her large shears poised to protect herself.  
“Who’s there?” She yelled. Her shout was answered with a quiet whinny, and from the woods emerged a horse who looked as if it were about to collapse. Prim shrieked when she saw the body on the horses back, slumped down and bloodied to unrecognition.  
“Oh my God. Oh my God! Get out of here, shoo! I don’t want you!” Prim waved the horse and its rider away, but the horse stood its ground, shaking its head and snorting.

Prim looked around anxiously for anyone around her. Setting the shears down she slowly approached the horse to take a look at the man on its back. She put a hand on her lips to keep a horrified gasp from slipping out. He was wounded, that much was obvious, but upon closer inspection she could see at least three gunshot wounds, and an uncountable number of cuts and what she assumed was a burn on his arm. His worn leather hat covered his face, but what she could see was a nasty deep purple. Her heart panged in her chest, this poor man!

She took a deep breath to steady herself and grabbed the horses reins hoping it wouldn’t bite her, or try to run away. Luckily it didn’t, and instead dutifully followed her as she quietly snuck the horse and man onto the Braithewaite property. She had to hug the edges of the property, and multiple times she came close to being seen by a guard, and once she had to convince one to check on suspicious activity where she was tending the rose bushes, while the horse and its rider hid out of sight, until they made it to her personal… shack? Either way, it was home.

“How am I going to get him in there?” She asked the horse, who stared at her in return. Prim sighed deeply, truly doubting her moment of generosity and pulled the horse up as close as she could get her, and pulled the man onto her back, almost falling onto her face, then his face, then managed to drag him onto her bed with the sheer will of God as the man had to weigh a thousand pounds, compared to her. She adjusted his limbs to a comfortable position, took off his boots, gun, gun holsters, hat, and the rest of his many weapons and satchel.

“Okay, next order of business, cleaning this guy up!” She said to herself, with a false tone of cheer. Even though it was a hot day, she lit a small fire in the hearth, and while that was heating up she grabbed a bowl and stepped outside, before going back inside and grabbing another, having noticed the man’s horse looking almost as bad as him. The walk to the large pond wasn’t far from her cabin, so she was back with daylight to spare. Rooting through some cabinets she grabbed a knife and a pair of scissors, and set to removing the mans soiled clothes. She tried salvaging what she could, but in the end, the only thing left were his long johns cut to his thighs and his socks. With a few rags she had found she cleaned the blood, mud, gun powder, and sweat from his body.

She took extra care to sanitize his wounds with some alcohol she found in his saddlebags, and heated up her knife in the small fire before plunging it into his gunshot wounds. The man grunted in pain, jerking up but still unconscious. Prim wiggled the knife until she felt the bullet and popped it out. She repeated this process until all of the bullets, four instead of the initial three she first assumed, were out of his body. Sighing reluctantly she dug out a dress from her makeshift closet and cut it into strips and wrapped them around his wounds, praying that she did good enough and she wouldn’t wake up to a corpse in her bed. She decided against giving him a healing tonic, not wanting him to drown before he even gets a chance to heal. As long as he didn’t catch fever, she thought, he should live.

The nickering of a horse outside of her cabin startled her, she had forgotten about it. Wearily she gathered up some less than humanly edible fruit and oatmeal and stepped outside, immediately greeted by a silky muzzle curiously sniffling the goodies in her arms. Giggling Primrose piled up the food at the side of the cabin, out of view of the other occupants of Mrs. Braithwaites Manor.

Stepping back inside, she cleaned up her mess, bloody rags went into the fire, bloody water tossed outside, chair back where it belongs, tools used in their respective places, by the time she was done the sun had set and she was exhausted. Since her bed was currently in use, she made a pallet out of her torn dress and old moth eaten sheets, thankfully she had some pillows still that she kept for decoration. She quickly changed into her night dress, keeping an eye on her patient, even though he was out cold, then put out the small fire and retired to her pallet.


	2. Chapter 2

Pain rocked his body in waves, he couldn’t pinpoint where in his body it was coming from. His eyes were clenched tightly shut, so he opened them then immediately regretted it when blinding light burned his vision.

“Are you… awake?” A timid voice broke through the silence somewhere beside him, causing him to ignore his pain and jerk up, trying to get his eyes to adjust to the light. He couldn’t see anything, just blurs and he soon found that his guns were gone.

“I’m not going to hurt you!” The voice shrieked, “I found your horse, or well, your horse found me, and well, it wouldn’t leave, so I brought you to my cabin and helped all I could.” The voice explained. Arthur stayed sitting up, but began calming down as his vision came to focus.

Across from the bed he had been sleeping on stood a woman halfway crouched behind a battered chair, her expression stuck halfway between frightened and curious. She was a smaller woman, with bright blonde hair that was clumsily falling out of a long braid, wearing a plain dress ruined with old and new grass and dirt stains. Done with his observation of her, he took in his new surroundings. A very small cabin, with a small hearth in the far wall, a small table with only two chairs, and cabinets lining the upper walls. On the floor was what Arthur assumed was where the woman had been sleeping, as far away from him as she could get.

Arthur was overcome with thirst, he cleared his throat but it was dry and did nothing but scratched painfully. The woman gasped and jumped from her crouched position behind the chair, fear forgotten.

“Of course, you must be parched! Forgive me.” Arthur watched her rummage around the cabinets, procuring a wooden cup, and fill it with water from a bucket beside a door. She sat on the chair beside his bed and offered him the cup, to which he greedily gulped down in one go. He held the cup out to her.

“More.” He said, he admitted, quite rudely. She blinked at him, wide eyed, before shaking her head and filling it up again. This time he savored the cool water with his eyes closed, and gave her the cup to refill silently. When she turned her back he lowered himself down from his half-up-half-down position to lay fully on his back.

“You have four gunshot wounds. I got the bullets out, cleaned you and wrapped you up, but I didn't give you any medicine because I didn't want you to choke. Would you like some now?” Arthur grunted and nodded with his eyes closed. He listened to her rustling around for a minute and heard her sit back down next to him and open the medicine bottle.

“I got this medicine from your saddlebag, I hope that’s okay. And your horse is just fine, incase you were worried. She’s a stubborn pain in my backside.” He could hear the smile in her huffing and smiled mentally, glad his horse was doing well. “Here, open your mouth.” Arthur wasn’t happy at the concept of being hand fed like a child, but complied anyway too weary from his pain to put up any resistance. The bitter medicine trickled into his mouth and he swallowed it down with a grimace.

“There you go. Oh, I snuck over some soup incase you woke up. You haven’t eaten in three days so I imagine you’re starving.”

“Three days?” He said, frustrated. The woman hummed in confirmation, sweeping around the small room gathering the bowl of soup and a spoon.

“That’s right. I was out by the front gates tending to my mistresses’ rose bushes when I heard a frightful sound in the woods behind me. I grabbed my shears in case it was one of those Grays’ boys, but out comes this big stubborn horse, with a half dead man on her back!” The woman settled into the chair once more and offered him the bowl of soup, which he gratefully accepted.

“I admit,” She hummed, twirling her braid sheepishly in her hands. “That I did try to get her to go away.”

Arthur chuckled dryly, pausing to reply. “Well, miss, I would too were I you.”

She laughed, a very light and happy sound. “Oh but I couldn’t. I had to sneak you, and your horse to my cabin. Can you imagine how hard it is to sneak a horse through a guarded property? I’m still surprised i got away with it.” She babbled on, but Arthur didn’t quite mind the chatter.

Arthur finished the soup in silence, letting her take the dishes to wash up.

“If you don’t mind my asking, miss, where am i?” He had to admit, being incapacitated in an unfamiliar surrounding, with a stranger though as unthreatening as she seemed, put him on edge.

Prim nervously tugged at her braid, drying off the wet bowl. “Well sir, you’re in my cabin that’s tucked away on the Braithwaite’s property.” Arthur cursed. He hadn’t done anything to anger the Braithwaite Patron, but he had heard of her cruelties, and had come into contact with her guards trying to sneak a letter to a girl named Penelope. 

“Don’t worry, no one bothers about me as long as I do my work, so you’re safe here! And my cabin is far away from the Manor, so no one will see you or your horse.” She reassured, seeing his tense demeanor. 

“I appreciate it miss, but I really ought to go. I got folk waitin’ for me.” Which was true. Arthur wasn’t like Micah or Trelawny who disappeared for large amounts of time, and the gang would start to worry. Prim bit her lip nervously, dragging her eyes across his wounds.

“Well mister, I would agree with you but you’ve been shot four times, and you got some nasty cuts there. I don’t think you could leave if you tried.”

Arthur growled, his brows furrowed and fists clenched. “Are you trying to say you’re gonna keep me here?” he grit out.

“No of course not!” Prim backed away, he may be wounded but he still terrified her and she had no doubt if he were angry enough he could get up to kill her. “I just meant, that is, that with how bad your wounds are that you’ll likely open them back up and bleed out before you get anywhere.”

Arthur closed his eyes, put his head down and exhaled slowly through his nose.   
“Of course, my bad miss.”

Prim relaxed out of her tense position, and sat down on her temporary bed on the floor.  
“My name is Primrose, but please call me Prim. Miss doesn’t suit someone like me.” 

“Arthur. Arthur… Callahan.” His vision was starting to blur again, a mix of his pain and the medicine taking its toll on his body, and he fell asleep.


End file.
